Research Projects​

​​My research is driven by a deep interest in understanding how biological and social processes interact to influence scientific knowledge, medical markets, and individual experiences. The empirical core of my research agenda is the study of reproduction, a process that simultaneously involves biological bodies, cultural norms, and powerful social institutions such as medicine, kinship, and the law. The goal of all my research is to contribute to social scientific debates about gender and medicine, policy discussions about reproductive and genetic technologies, and clinical efforts to improve reproductive health for women and men.

Sex Cells:​The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm

Sex Cells is a comparative study of how eggs and sperm, and the women and men who donate them, are valued in the medical marketplace. Drawing on nearly 100 interviews with staff and donors at six donation programs, as well as historical research and quantitative analyses, I show how the gendered framing of paid donation – as job or gift – not only influences the structure of the market, but also profoundly affects the individuals whose genetic material is being purchased.

GUYnecology:Men, Medical Knowledge, and Reproduction​Funded by a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation, this book project examines the history of medical knowledge-making about men’s reproduction and its consequences for individual men. The NIH puts it succinctly: "Reproductive health is an important component of men's overall health and well-being. Too often, males have been overlooked in discussions of reproductive health." In analyzing the historical and contemporary processes through which men have come to be overlooked in the realm of reproduction, Guynecology traces the social, clinical, and policy consequences that result from this gap in knowledge.

Book-Almeling, Guynecology: Men, Medical Knowledge, and Reproduction, under contract with University of California Press

﻿Survey of American Attitudes to Genetic Risk​With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, political scientist Shana Gadarian and I designed the National Genetic Risk Survey Experiment (NGRISE) to examine Americans' attitudes toward genetic risk. Each respondent in a nationally representative sample (N = 2,100) was assigned a genetic risk (20%, 30% . . . 80%) for a disease (colon cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer’s disease) and asked about many potential reactions. We find that people in the general population—regardless of health status or family history—responded to this hypothetical genetic risk by wanting to take action, and their reactions are stronger in domains related to self and family than to community and polity.

Survey of Women's Bodily Experiences of IVF​In this survey project, I compare women's bodily experiences of in vitro fertilization (IVF) based on their reason for using this technology, either to become pregnant themselves or to donate eggs in exchange for money. The survey was administered to 112 women at a large fertility clinic in New York City, and the first paper from this project is currently under review.